And now #CastleMondays are no more.
The couple slew their biggest dragon together before they brunched off into the sunset.
It’s daytime, and the park is busy.
Credit: Byron Cohen/ABC
“Thinking what I’m thinking?”
This whole operation could easily be a trap.
The location is a red herring, but there was still valuable information in the content of the call.
He keeps the radio running after he stops the car.
“Don’t you just love this song?”
he asks his victim, and then lights that sucker up.
It’s Caleb Brown, whose presence at that very sting Vikram had confirmed over encrypted email.
As Beckett processes what that news means, two SUVs roll into the parking lot.
Men with automatic weapons pour out and open fire.
Beckett and Castle’s hand guns are no match for the amount of firepower coming their way.
Death seems inevitable until a food truck careens into view.
Someone throws kick off the back and Castle and Beckett jump in.
He lets them have at his stash of untraceable weapons and gets on his way.
Beckett will go back and collect Vikram.
Castle will round up his family.
They’ll meet back at the panic room at Castle’s office.
Espo shows Ryan a message that Caleb had scratched into the briefcase: “RTHDMN.”
Vikram decodes the abbreviation and invites the detectives into the inner circle out of frustration.
Beckett is furious that Vikram expanded the target on their backs to include her friends.
Rysposito are ready to get to work.
(“We’re not going to let you go to war without your two best soldiers.")
“A feisty merlot, an elegant spread, delightful company.
If I wasn’t scared out of my mind, this would be a lovely afternoon.”
How fitting that one of our last moments with Martha involves her bringing a picnic to a lockdown.
But there’s work to be done.
Finally, a hit.
At the same time, Castle gets weary of twiddling his thumbs.
The driver flips on the radio after he gets his passenger’s desired destination.
The Brady kids start singing about the summer sun calling their names.
“Don’t you just love this song?”
The strategy is to divide the couple and use their weaknesses to destroy them.
For Castle, it’s his family.
For Kate, it’s her duty to her fellow soldiers.
For both of them, it’s each other.
Castle ends up in the clutches of their automobile firebug, a remorseless sociopath who calls himself Mr. Flynn.
(“Trust me, my name is the least consequential thing for you to know right now.”
“It’s an embarrassing name, isn’t it?")
He too wants to know what the secret is to Castle’s devotion to Beckett.
(“I became a better man.")
It’s like a family’s Thanksgiving relationship status interrogation, but with restraints.
And the reaffirming of his commitment to Beckett just makes the next part more painful.
Mason Wood tag-teams in for what he probably calls the fun part.
Mason leaves to complete the next phase of his plan.
NEXT: Wood you ever suspect?
Why would Mason call Beckett and not his buddy Castle?
If this weird friend is such a conspiracist, why would he want to talk?
To an ex-lawyer,no less?
“You and Mr. Castle have quite a bond,” Mason says.
“Yeah, well, I’m crazy for him.
He’s the love of my life,” she says.
Then Mason asks if she would ever walk away from this with him.
“I took an oath,” she explains.
“People that I care about were murdered.
And they deserve justice.”
“Must be hard carrying that weight,” Mason fake-empathizes.
“I don’t carry it alone,” Beckett says.
In other words: “You’re about to be dealing with two of us, bitch.”
They make it to the interrogation room just in time to save Castle from lethal injection.
They’re trapped in the room when a firefight with LokSat’s security team breaks out.
It’s that very building, he admits.
A kill room and an incinerator is directly underneath them, if Castle can manage to get there.
Unable to deal with both of them at the same time, Mason is disarmed by Beckett.
She and Castle run to each other and embrace in relief.
Caleb Brown is alive.
He steps into the room and shoots Castle in the chest.
Beckett runs in from their bedroom and returns fire.
Caleb falls dead, but Beckett’s been hit too.
She slumps to the ground, and she and Castle crawl toward each other, wordlessly.
They hold hands as the camera pans away.
But LokSat was Mason Wood.
Castle’s earlier run-in with Mason’s public persona didn’t even have anything todowith the LokSat case.
That’s how irrelevant he is.
So though it looked like this case would be Caskett’s last, LokSat didn’t deserve that distinction.
Maybe a neighbor heard gunshots and called the cops.
Maybe Hayley followed them home, just to be sure.
But someone got help.
Seven years later, Castle and Beckett are maybe still working cases, or maybe not.
But they are happy, and so are their Caskett babies.
The series ends on an echo of their wedding vows: “Always.”
